I am buying a new phone this month, and was about to start the typical research process when I realized I rather ask here.

Not looking for technical specifics, will handle that part myself. Rather I am looking for usability and ergonomic thoughts on the current generation of phones and in particular thoughts on the phones fellow WCers are using.

Motorola RAZR V3. Probably considered to be one step up from sending pigeons now.

I'll be shopping for a new one soon myself. All the ones I like the specs on seem to be an inch thick. I fancied a Samsung G800 until I held one. If it being large enough to stun medium sized mammals isn't a problem it looks like a good choice from what I've seen.

Using a Sony Ericson K800i. As I actually decided to buy it myself this time, instead of being tied into a contract, it's the best blend of function and form for the price. I got it for £70, which is an absolute bargain considering the quality of the camera on it.

My current phone, aside from occasional reception dropouts, and quite the step up from RAZR. Its slightly longer, but a little thinner, call quality is mostly good, and for the most part I'm happy with it. Essentially its a second generation SYNC, minus exterior music controls, but much nicer overall. Ergonomically, the only thing that bugs me is the lid, its slightly narrower than the body and reaches almost but not quite to the edge of the phone, so I'll run into moments where I'm either not gripping the lid to flip it open, or have my pinky/ring finger in the way of actually trying to open it. The only other complaints I have are minor at best- custom PC cable instead of mini-USB, mp3s for ringtones but not alarms, and an inability to shut off the shutter noise on the camera. Back on the positive side, I absolutely love the look of the phone, it sports a decent battery life, camera's reasonable(for the US anyhow) at 2MP, music player's decent, the display is gorgeous, external OLED, and speedy UMTS/HSDPA data(if I ever feel like incurring the charges).

If I'd had more money to spend, I'd have probably been looking to either the Nokia N75 or an iPhone, but its been doing the job just fine for me for the last 2 months.

I have two phones at the moment. Work gave me a Blackberry 8830. Which is great if you need one for work and you live and die by e-mail and phone calls. I like the bluetooth feature since my laptop has bluetooth. I can write my articles on my laptop and then e-mail them using my blackberry. No more searching for network card.

I also have an iPhone, which I wouldn't suggest unless you really want one. It does have some nice features, but I would wait for the next gen of iPhone. It's novelty wears off fairly quick.

My problem with the iPhone is the cost. I don't know about the US one but in comparison to other handsets in the UK it is laughable.

If I wanted a Nokia N95 I'd get it gratis with an 18 month £35 a month contract on the same network. That's a 3G phone with 5mp camera and all the other random crap they've packed into it. My brother just got one and it came with Spiderman and a cable for hooking it up to a TV.

An iPhone? Same contract length and cost. The contract has half the gratis text messages and they want £269 for the handset, it does not have even basic 3G let alone the type that can get you 3.6Mb mobile broadband. 2mb camera. Being forced to pay for ringtones, not only that but to buy the music track from iTunes first, then pay to make it a ringtone. No cutting MP3s up to use like I do now.

I am currently seriously considering a Nokia N95 or N82. They have GPS, WLAN, Bluetooth, an excellent camera (for a phone) for documenting random stuff. Also, the Nokia S60 platform has always been very robust and had the least bugs (especially in comparison to many Samsung or Motorola Phones, which you could crash by just sending an vCard over Bluetooth) If anyone actually ever needs all these features is another debate. Depends on what you really need. IPhone is far overhyped and too expensive. They put a curse on it that makes everyone want one despite absurd contract terms.If you wait another six months, you might also get the first Android based phone.

If I wanted a Nokia N95 I'd get it gratis with an 18 month £35 a month contract on the same network. That's a 3G phone with 5mp camera and all the other random crap they've packed into it. My brother just got one and it came with Spiderman and a cable for hooking it up to a TV.

That's what I've just got.

There's no substitute for working with a touchscreen, but the iPhone is just a shit communications device, and way overpriced.

Nokia N95 8GB -- seems to be relatively useful for email, so long as you have mad thumb skillz or have the SU-8W bluetooth fold-out keyboard (which is terrific, if a little mushy in the key action). Its email system is having trouble grappling with AOL's smtp right now, but its IMAP provision is otherwise smart as a whip.

If you get one, you've got to bypass the PC Suite software for everything but application installs. PC Suite is completely broken in the N95 8GB iteration. If you want to put videos on it, you're going to need a way to convert them into mp4.

If you get one, you've got to bypass the PC Suite software for everything but application installs.

Series 60 Phones should allow you to push mobile apps via Bluetooth OBEX to the phone. You can install it from there. Not tried it on the N95, though. The Nokia PC suite has always been completely broken. Don't let it even touch your PC, you may never get rid of it.

I have a Nokia 6620 Smartphone. It's several years old, but I like it because it's a smartphone running the Symbian OS, for which there's lots of shareware available. This is how I use custom oggs for ringtones, since even though my phone can play mp3s, it won't play them as ringtones, which annoys me.

My next phone, which I hope takes better pictures, will have to be just as hackable, because I have a feeling there's always going to be a feature I wish I had, or wasn't willing to pay extra for.